


Us two, Right here, Right now

by 0nlyamemory, Seonhyeol



Category: B.A.P, K-pop
Genre: Accidental Gay, Accidental Service Kink, Crossdressing, Dancing, Dumbasses, First Kiss, Friends to Lovers, Frottage, Hair-pulling, High Heels, M/M, Masturbation, Premature Ejaculation, Surprise Kissing, Teasing, Teenagers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-18
Updated: 2014-09-18
Packaged: 2018-02-17 20:11:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2321804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/0nlyamemory/pseuds/0nlyamemory, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seonhyeol/pseuds/Seonhyeol
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>During the lead-up to the 2013 year end special season, Youngjae manages to sprain his ankle. Zelo is under-aged, Yongguk is Yongguk, and Himchan laughed in their faces when they told him what he'd be wearing. Which means that Daehyun is Now stuck being Hyuna to Jongup's Hyunseung. What could possibly go wrong?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Us two, Right here, Right now

**Author's Note:**

> So once I had this plot bunny, and then accidentally I almost eleven thousand words of Daehyun and Jongup making out in a practice room. That is a thing that happened. (If I ever manage to write it, this is not going to stay just those two. God help me. And my weird fixation on Daehyun's accidental gay subby nonsense.)

“I feel naked! I am not coming out of this bathroom.” The hollow bathroom door did almost nothing to dull the petulant whine in Daehyun’s voice. Everyone exchanged glances, Youngjae’s somewhat glazed and askew from where he was laid out on the couch with his right foot propped up on a few pillows stacked against the arm, an ice pack tucked around his ankle. Jongup and Junhong were propped against the front of the other couch, legs stretched out in front of them. Himchan and Yongguk had been forced to tuck their legs up to make room for them, the former with his legs tucked under and to the side and the latter in a classic tailor’s seat.

Yongguk rubbed his face with his hand and took a deep breath, looked to the ceiling for patience, and opened his mouth just as Youngjae cut in, slightly slurred with tiredness from a long day’s worth of doctor’s visits and good painkillers. “Stop your fucking whining and get out here. I had to do it already and I didn’t die, so I’m sure you’ll be fine.”

Giggling despite himself, Junhong boggled at his hyung’s uncommon frankness while Jongup and Himchan watched the bathroom door with interest. Finally the latch gave with a soft snick and the door slowly eased open, Daehyun’s eyes dark and wide as he poked his head around to glare balefully. “My legs are cold. Himchan-hyung’s razor is never going to be the same, and this sucks.”

“If you actually killed my razor, I’m gonna kick your ass.” Himchan’s eyebrows were together in a picture-perfect scowl, but the corner of his mouth twitched as Daehyun finally eased out of the bathroom.

“I’d like to see you try,” Daehyun grumbled, feeling especially coltish. He tried to negotiate the space between the bathroom door—between the bunk room and the laundry—and the kitchenette without touching anything with his legs. The problem was that air was touching his legs, it tickled, and goddammit, the heat was just not on high enough. “Junhong, turn the heat up. To, like. 25. This shit is ridiculous.”

Junhong hopped up easily, catching his balance on the arm of the sofa behind him. He picked his way around Jongup’s legs and through the scattering of remotes and game controllers on the floor to duck down the hall towards the thermostat next to the front door.

Yongguk finally spoke, squinting suspiciously over the back of the other couch and the breakfast bar, covered in everyone’s assorted cell phones, game consoles, and haircare products, at Daehyun, who was staring morosely into the open and mostly empty kitchen cabinets. “Just because you’re feeling bad doesn’t mean we should waste so much energy. Can’t you wear pants or something? And don’t eat too many snacks, the show’s only a week away.”

“I feel like there are invisible eels crawling all over my legs and you’re worried about energy consumption? Typical. Fine. Junhong, 22 is okay. I guess.” Daehyun rubbed the back of his left calf with the top of his right foot and let the cabinet door close with a muffled bang. He rounded the corner of the breakfast bar and shoved a stray chair back under the dinner table with his foot before standing himself next to the couch—his couch, by god—which was currently occupied by Youngjae and his accoutrements. “Why’d you have to sprain your ankle, anyway? This is stupid. Junhong’s better at rapping, why can’t he be Hyuna?”

Himchan laughed, only a little snidely, as Daehyun picked his way through to wedge himself onto the couch between his hyungs. “Can you imagine Zelo the Wonder Maknae in that outfit? I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t be able to film anything below his shoulders, and then how would anyone appreciate Jongup-ah’s wonderful dancing?”

Junhong snorted as he collapsed back onto the floor, his mission complete. He looked up at Daehyun, resting his head against the other boy’s knee to flutter his eyelashes dramatically. “Don’t you want to be the fanciest girl at the Gayo Daejeon? Just think how many hits your fan sites will get when they start posting pictures.”

“I hate you. You should never have gotten taller, then none of this would have happened.” Daehyun knocked his knee against the side of Junhong’s head none too gently, wrinkling his nose at his friend’s laughter. After a moment he took a deep breath and twisted to look at Youngjae, grabbing Himchan’s shoulder for support as he stood up. “Where is the damn practice outfit? If I’m going to have to learn the dance, I guess I have to put it on sooner or later. I’d hate to learn all the choreography in sneakers and then actually break my ankle when I tried to do it for real.”

“It’s in the duffle next to… Next to the front door. Under where our coats are.” Youngjae squeezed his eyes closed and then opened them as widely as he could, pinning the ceiling with a dazed stare. “Can you guys, like. Stop talking? I think I’m about to fall asleep, and I don’t want you fucks invading my dreams.”

“That’s because you wanna dream about your girlfriend instead,” Junhong sing-songed, looking inordinately pleased with himself until Jongup smacked him upside the back of the head and wrinkled his nose.

“Don’t make fun of him, he’s hurt and luckier than any of us. Jealous isn’t a good look for you, maknae.” Himchan ruffled Junhong’s hair to take the sting out of his imperious tone and then looked up at Daehyun, who was shifting very slowly from foot to foot like he was trying to figure out how to cover his legs with nothing but his basketball shorts and sheer force of will. “You and Jongup should go practice, you have like three hours until lights out and we’ve got interviews first thing in the morning. Hut hut.”

Jongup tucked his feet under and hopped up with a muffled thud. As soon as he was upright he hooked an arm around Daehyun’s shoulders to haul him towards the laundry room, trying to diffuse what appeared to be somewhere between the start of a tirade and a hissy fit. “Let’s go. The faster we learn the choreography, the sooner we can go to sleep. It really isn’t that bad, I promise.”

\---

“I am never going to get this!” Daehyun threw himself back onto the bench without looking, his scowl never wavering an inch from Jongup’s face. “I look like an elephant trying to pretend to be a horse in these heels, and no matter how I do the steps, everything just looks wrong.”

Daehyun sounded like a whiny brat, and from the expression on his face, he knew it. But he looked so funny—his arms crossed angrily under the swell of the padded bra, covered but not really hidden by the clingy, ridiculous, turtle-necked, cropped black angora sweater, his feet turned in and his knees turned out to try and make the tight, high cut dance shorts more comfortable—that Jongup couldn’t help but laugh. “It’s because you’re so stiff, you know. If you could just relax, you’d look a million times more natural.”

“It’s not going to matter,” Daehyun grumbled morosely, looking up at Jongup through his lashes. “As soon as I put on that wig I could be freaking perfect and no one would care. I’m going to look like a fool. Why can’t you be Hyuna, you’re prettier than she is anyway.” He stopped as soon as he realized what he’d said, then bit his lower lip and dropped his gaze to the side.

“What do you mean, I’m prettier than she is?” Jongup asked, walking over to stand in front of Daehyun. He stopped only a foot or so in front of where Daehyun’s knees would be if they weren’t splayed. He could tell that Daehyun was embarrassed and he wasn’t entirely sure why. Daehyun had picked up the choreography quickly, even with the complication of heels to contend with, but almost as soon as he’d mastered the moves he’d become awkward in a way that Jongup didn’t associate with his hyung.

Daehyun looked down at the toes of Jongup’s sneakers, his brow furrowing, and pursed his lips before spitting out, less clearly than he usually spoke with his bandmates, “I meant exactly what I said. If you were— If you do her part, no one will be able to take their eyes off you.”

“So you don’t want to do it because you think I’d do it better? That seems— I mean.” Jongup paused, not wanting to flat-out say that Daehyun was being stupid. But it didn’t make sense to him. Everyone in the band took Jongup’s dancing abilities for granted most of the time, but he couldn’t see why that would make Daehyun not want to try at all.

While he was trying to think of what to say, looking off at the corner of the room with his hands tucked against the rolled-down band of his sweatpants, Daehyun stood up somewhat abruptly. “That’s not what I’m saying at all. Fuck.”

Daehyun went to take a step back and wobbled slightly, hurriedly recentering his weight on the balls of his feet, and glowered down at Jongup with a look of frustration and something else on his face. “I just. You keep telling me to relax, and I don’t know how.”

Jongup looked up—quite a bit farther up than he usually had to, his well-worn sneakers no match for the seven centimeter character shoes Daehyun had strapped to his feet—and blinked, completely unable to read the expression on Daehyun’s face. He worried his lower lip with his teeth for a moment before asking, voice hesitant and as non-confrontational as he could manage, “Do you want to try running the chore again? You just— You know the steps, all you have to do is play the part. I know you can do it.”

“Sure, fine. Whatever. Let’s give this one more try. But if I fuck it up again, I think you should do it. Maybe if I can see what it’s supposed to look like, I’ll suck less.” Daehyun stomped past Jongup to take his mark at the back of stage right relative to the floor-to-ceiling practice mirror, pushing his hand through his hair until it stuck up in sweaty tufts. He carefully centered his weight on his left foot, ready to do the walk at the beginning of his part, and tugged fruitlessly at the spandex of his shorts for a moment before giving up when they resolutely refused to cover any more of his thighs.

Jongup looked at him for a long moment, impressed despite himself at how well Daehyun managed to deal with such a ridiculous outfit and somewhat perplexed by the color that had been staining his cheeks intermittently since the start of rehearsal, almost two hours ago. It made Daehyun look… Different, and he wished he knew exactly what the problem was. If the way he was standing, weight shifted to one hip and shoulders back to make the most of the four sets of chicken cutlets wedged in the 36C bra that had appeared out of the back of the TS wardrobe closet was any indication, it wasn’t embarrassment.

Finally Jongup just shook his head and walked over to hit the cue on the iPod with their practice track loaded, then jogged over to his mark as the five second clearance clicked through. “Just remember, be natural.”

For the first few seconds, Jongup thought that his encouragement had worked. When the intro started Daehyun’s chin came up, his eyes widening and his shoulders moving in counterpoint to his hips as they sauntered towards each other, a slight smile curling one corner of his mouth. Not for the first time, Jongup spared a moment to appreciate just how great his hyung was, that he could achieve that level of confidence less than six hours after being conscripted. Jongup knew the steps by heart now, his muscles tense and his joints loose to imitate Hyunseung’s signature seemingly-staccato flow of movement, and he let muscle memory take over so that he could focus on other, more important things.

Like how as soon as they met at center back, Daehyun wobbled on his right foot, not-quite turning his ankle, and squared his shoulders in complete opposition to the flow of the music. Jongup tried to keep his frustration off his face as he leaned in, his cheek about an inch away from the side of Daehyun’s neck where the choppy blonde wig would be if they’d had the time or energy to bother figuring out how to get a wig cap on in the absence of the stylists.

But as soon as his hands touched Daehyun, the indentations in the center of his palms fitting comfortably against the crests of Daehyun’s hipbones, everything went bafflingly wrong. Daehyun stepped back instead of forward into the ball-change intro for his solo, and for a moment their bodies were pressed together from Jongup’s collarbones all the way to his knees. Then Daehyun ducked, twisted, and sidled away, backing up towards the wall with his shoulders hunched and his stomach sucked in, his face twisted unpleasantly.

He raised his hands up and pushed his splayed fingers towards Jongup, backpedaling across the floor as rapidly as he could without tripping and falling on his ass, totally ignoring the music. “I give up, I can’t do it. I’m a fucking idiot, let’s go home and tell Manager Kang that we have to do a different number. This one is fucked.”

Jongup just blinked at him, the careful tension and posture of the song draining out of his muscles as he stood up straighter. He rocked his weight onto the heels of his feet as he briefly hyperextended his knees, just to make sure that something was making sense. “What do you mean? You know all the steps! We can’t change the number now, they already—”

“I said, I can’t do it!” Daehyun’s voice broke as he half-shouted, turning away from Jongup—and towards the mirror—as he ducked his head and muttered, unaware that his hands were trying, somewhat vainly, to adjust those damnable dance shorts to be more comfortable in the face of their sudden increase in tightness. “I just— I’m an idiot, or whatever. I guess my dream to be Korea’s first professional Idol Drag Queen is in vain.”

Jongup looked over at Daehyun when it became obvious that he wasn’t going to say anything else. The silence was somehow oppressive, even with “Now” still blaring from the speakers at the back of the room, and after a long moment he wrinkled his nose.

The set of Daehyun’s shoulders was all over dejection, and from the way he was standing it was obvious that he’d forgotten every damn thing that Jongup had told him about not locking his knees when he was wearing heels. The dense musculature of his thighs was stark under his warm golden skin, and distracted Jongup for a moment before he finally remembered what he had been meaning to do.

Jongup shook his hair out of his eyes and walked up behind his hyung, looping an arm around his waist without thinking to pull him into a reassuring back hug. “Don’t worry, we’ll figure something out.”

For a brief moment Jongup worried that Daehyun was having some sort of seizure. His neck—warm and slightly shampoo-scented against Jongup’s cheek—shivered and his shoulders came up, pressing the swell of his trapezius hard against the underside of Jongup’s cheekbone. His legs twitched, as if he wanted to jump away and melt back against Jongup’s body all at the same time, and Jongup didn’t entirely understand what was going on.

But the shaky intake of Daehyun’s breath, sudden against Jongup’s hands on his stomach, made him look up into the mirror. Daehyun’s eyes were wide and his chin had dropped, his lips parted on a sound that Jongup had never heard him make before.

It made everything, every single stupid thing about the last two hours, make sense. But that didn’t mean that Jongup had a clue what to do.

He was distantly aware of the hair on his arms standing up, of how the temperature in the room seemed to simultaneously drop three degrees and raise ten, of his stomach turning over and his cock twitching in his boxer briefs, but all of that didn’t seem terribly important. Suddenly he realized just how close he was to Daehyun, how much of their bodies were in contact, and the fine tremors he could feel under the palms of his hands as Daehyun panted, short and sharp and scared-sounding, were like needles along his spine. “H-Hyung?”

Daehyun squeezed his eyes closed, simultaneously relieved to no longer be confronted with the tableaux of him-and-Jongup in the mirror and scared witless over not being able to see what was happening. He paused for a moment before making a valiant attempt at a deep, cleansing breath. It faltered at the end as he rocked back under the pressure that Jongup unconsciously put on his stomach, between his navel and his hips, thumbs warm against his skin where they were tucked under the hem of his sweater.

It came as a shock, hazy and distant, to realize that he wasn’t the only one whose body had apparently staged a coup over reason. He swallowed, his tongue feeling thick and his lips suddenly tingling, and turned his head to mutter against Jongup’s hair, “If this is some kind of, I don’t know. Super fucked up wet dream, I’d like to wake up now. Please.”

Jongup didn’t say anything for the space of one breath, then two, hyperaware of the warmth rebounding off Daehyun’s skin just in front of his mouth. It wasn’t like he’d ever imagined this happening—because he’d never really imagined this combination of awkwardness, terror, and muscle-aching want in his entire life, had never realized that it could exist until this moment—but he couldn’t, if he was being entirely honest with himself, say that he didn’t like it.

He slid his right hand entirely under Daehyun’s sweater without really stopping to consider the potential consequences of his actions. He’d never been a think first sort of person and probably never would be, and the way that the fine muscles overlaying Daehyun’s ribs shifted under his hand, the way that Daehyun’s voice caught and broke as he gasped and arched his back, were reason enough to not question it. He turned his head a little, tucking the bridge of his nose up against the slight dent behind Daehyun’s ear, and wet his lower lip with a brief drag of his tongue. He took a slow, shaky breath and mumbled, voice low and soft and the slightest bit rough, “If it is, I kind of hope I don’t.”

Daehyun spun on his toes, knee banging unnoticed against Jongup’s as he turned. He carded his fingers through Jongup’s hair as he took a deep breath, his eyes blinking open just long enough to glimpse the shocked look on his friend’s face. Then he brought his other hand up, hauling Jongup onto his toes, and pressed his mouth against Jongup’s parted lips, his low sound of want almost, but not entirely, overwhelming Jongup’s gasp.

Jongup barely had time to realize that Daehyun was moving before he was standing on tip-toe, pulled tight against Daehyun’s body by the grip on his hair and the way that his knees had suddenly and completely abandoned him. He stole a breath as Daehyun broke away, tried to steady himself by pressing his shaking hands against the slight indent of Daehyun’s waist, his fingers twisting into the candy-soft knit of Daehyun’s sweater. He wanted to ask what, precisely, was going on, but his tongue didn’t seem to want to do anything but wet his lips, which felt simultaneously numb and afire.

Before he managed to do anything more useful than shift his feet to give himself more leverage to arch his body catlike against Daehyun’s, their mouths met again and his entire world changed.

It wasn’t that he’d never kissed anyone before. He had, of course. He’d had middle school girlfriends before being a trainee completely devoured his free time. It was just that no one had ever kissed him like this before.

Their mouths were barely even open, the rough push of breath the only thing being exchanged, but he felt as if he were bungee jumping. As if the press of their bodies and the way that Daehyun was massaging the space behind the points of his jaw with his palms, tugging at his lower lip with his own lips, was the only thing in the entire universe that mattered.

Somewhere in the middle of dragging his tongue along the sweep of Jongup’s upper lip Daehyun realized that this was sort of weird. He felt like he was about to fall down, only partially because all of his weight was balanced on his toes because of the heels, and his knees were aching from being locked in such an awkward position. He was kissing Jongup, and he was liking it. Really, really liking it. And he didn’t want to stop.

So instead of stepping away, which he realized suddenly would probably make things awkward and horrible forever, he decided to be clever. He bent his knees and used his right hip to spin Jongup around, pulling his right hand free of Jongup’s hair so he could catch his weight against the smooth, cool glass of the mirror that had been behind him just a moment before.

Once he had more points of balance to work with he carefully guided Jongup back until his back was flat against the glass. As Daehyun stepped in he eased one of his knees between Jongup’s, grinning at the sudden gasp that announced his thigh finding its mark.

He rubbed the side of his nose against Jongup’s as he took a deep breath, lightheaded and entirely uncertain how this was happening. He felt like he was about to die, with heat twisting sullen and stabbing-sharp low in his gut and his heart racing, but instead of addressing either of those things he guided Jongup’s jaw open with a soft press of his thumb and licked into the warmth of his mouth with a muffled groan.

Jongup reacted automatically, his body moving without any conscious thought at all. He slipped his left hand down from Daehyun’s waist to palm his ass and reached up with his right to grab Daehyun’s hair, just behind his ear. He rolled his hips into the press of Daehyun’s thigh with a soft sound, hooking his right ankle against the inside of Daehyun’s left knee for leverage. At Daehyun’s shocked groan he blinked his eyes open, everything blurry at such a close distance, and hiccuped out a raspy little chuckle. “This is pretty fun. I like it.”

Almost as soon as Jongup’s fingers tangled in his hair, pulling his head back and ripping a truly horrible noise from his throat, Daehyun realized that the universe hated him. Or, more specifically, the person who had conceived of the glorified swim trunks that he had wiggled into without too much difficulty a few hours ago had been born solely to cause him, at this precise moment, an unspeakable amount of pain.

He managed to force his hips into stillness after one jaw-clenching moment and hurriedly grabbed onto Jongup’s to keep them still. He panted, open mouthed and more than slightly overwhelmed, into Jongup’s hair for a long moment before wheezing, “I— I need to put on real pants. Otherwise I think I’m gonna die.”

“You what?” Jongup shifted his weight experimentally against the hold that Daehyun had on his hips, huffing when he discovered just how firmly he was caught. He leaned his head against the mirrored wall and tugged Daehyun’s head back so that he could get a proper look at Daehyun’s face.

He was taken aback by what he saw, all flushed cheeks and swollen lips and heavy-lidded eyes. He had definitely never seen Daehyun looking like this, and while it was quite frankly one of the hottest things he had ever seen in his life, he also noticed the tension in his jaw and the pained grimace that rippled across Daehyun’s features as he slowly inched his hips backwards.

He let his right foot slip back to the ground and moved his left hand back up to Daehyun’s waist. His eyebrows tipped up in an expression of concern as he asked, without really thinking about just how stupid a question it was, “Are you okay?”

Daehyun snorted as he took a step back, wobbling for a second before remembering the no-weight-on-your-heels trick to surviving in tall shoes. How girl groups managed to do this every day without way more horrific accidents than actually happened completely baffled him. He rubbed his hands against the fronts of his thighs with a grimace, shifting his hips minutely in an entirely useless bid to make this less uncomfortable than it was. “I feel like I’m wearing a pair of socks five sizes too small. Except on my junk. Let me put on real clothes and then ask me again, yeah?”

Jongup laughed at the way that Daehyun moved across the floor towards his dufflebag, like a marionette with tangled strings or a cat on crinkly paper. He still felt giddy, like his heart was in his throat and every inch of his body was brand new, every sensation being experienced for the first time, but now he could think. “Are you going to take everything off? I mean. Put on your regular clothes.”

Daehyun glanced over at Jongup when he asked, distracted from his contemplation of how he was going to bend over to get his sweats out of the duffle without accidentally killing himself, and frowned. “Do you want me to? Or not want me to? I don’t know. But I guess I should at least take the heels off, so I don’t kill myself accidentally.”

He hesitated for a moment, raking his lower lip with his teeth, and then asked the floor in the middle of the room, his voice quiet and almost expressionless, embarrassment radiating almost visibly from his body. “Could you, uh. Help me get out of these?”

“Sure.” Jongup didn’t really think anything of the request as he walked across the pale wood of the floor. When he reached Daehyun, standing awkwardly and shivering slightly in the cool practice room air, he realized that this was going to be a little more complicated than he’d initially assumed. For one thing, he wasn’t exactly sure how they were going to get those dance shorts—which looked _amazing_ on him, it had to be noted—off without someone getting hurt.

He leaned over, balancing himself with his left leg kicked back in an unconscious half-arabesque, and scooped Daehyun’s undershirt and sweats out of the bag with one hand. Then he dropped them onto the bench they were standing next to, where they’d be easy to reach. He cocked his head to the side, eyeing Daehyun up and down, and asked consideringly, “Do you think you should get the heels off first? That way you won’t fall down or anything.”

“Sure.” Daehyun started to bend down, picking his right foot up off the floor to reach for the buckle of the t-strap, and stopped about half as far down as he needed to be to reach it with a peculiar look of horror on his face. He tried to take a deep breath to deal with the discomfort and threw off his balance; he almost fell down, right arm and leg flailing, before Jongup stepped in and got him steady and standing again with a hatefully bright laugh.

Daehyun looked up at the ceiling for strength as he took another deep breath, properly this time, his hands opening and closing at his sides as Jongup’s hands slowly slid off his upper arms. Finally he looked back down at Jongup and nodded, the corner of his mouth twisting as he said, “Okay, yeah. Can you, uh. Can you help?”

Jongup didn’t even bother to finish saying “Okay,” before he fell gracefully to his knees, feet flexed against the floor and his eyes bright as he aimed what he obviously meant to be a reassuring grin up at Daehyun’s face. He tapped Daehyun’s left ankle to tell him to lift his foot, curling his fingers under the stiff arch of the shoe to guide its toebox against his thigh as he looked back down. “We’ll get these off in no time. Don’t worry.”

Somewhat unhelpfully, Daehyun realized almost a full minute after the fact the potential repercussions of his request. He made a peculiar little high pitched whine as Jongup knelt in front of him, and had to put his hand on Jongup’s shoulder for balance as he found himself manouvered into place without any sort of warning.

He wasn’t sure which was worse, watching Jongup on his knees or not knowing what was going to happen next. By the time Jongup had wrestled the buckle of his left shoe open and eased the hateful thing off his foot, he was more than ready for this to be over. More than ready to never think about this ever again, to be honest—though his traitorous brain seemed pretty intent on engraving every detail of what Jongup looked like as he looked up at him through his lashes, a proud smile painted across his face, in his memory forever.

Jongup tapped the top of Daehyun’s right foot with his fingertips as soon as he was sure that Daehyun was steady on his left, humming to himself softly. This was actually sort of fun, being able to feel every motion of Daehyun’s body through their points of contact, hand on shoulder and foot on thigh, the backs of his fingers resting on Daehyun’s ankle as he picked open the buckle.

Finally it gave and he made a pleased sound, pulling the t-strap free by sliding his thumb under the join and tugging it open with the back of his hand. As soon as he had Daehyun’s foot out of the shoe and the heels tucked safely into the duffle, he looked up, lifting from his half-seat against the heels of his sneakers to give him a better angle of attack. “Alright, let’s get these off. You are wearing underwear, right?”

Any retort to that that Daehyun could possibly have made died unspoken as Jongup ran his hands up the backs of Daehyun’s legs, rocking up to stand on his knees as he palmed over the slippery-feeling spandex along the outsides of Daehyun’s hips to hook his fingers into the waistband. Instead he had to work astonishingly hard not to swallow his tongue, and grabbed Jongup’s shoulders with both hands as he choked on a startled curse. “Fuck! Yes. I am.”

And thank fuck for it, because otherwise he would have to set these damned shorts on fire, rather than deal with the shame of giving them back to the style noonas. As it was, he wasn’t entirely sure that he would be able to avoid buying new ones to prevent them from murdering him in his sleep or dressing him entirely in pastels for their next promotion. But without his briefs on he would definitely be in a world of hurt. He looked down, distantly aware that he was panting again, and carefully loosened his grip on Jongup’s shoulders as he licked his lips and said, voice raspy and uncertain, “I could, uh. I think I could probably get these off myself, if you—”

“Don’t worry about it, it’s no problem.” Jongup had spent a while contemplating the problem, frowning thoughtfully at the arc of Daehyun’s dick stretching out the fabric over his left hip, and he was pretty sure that he’d figured this out. He hooked the first two fingers of each hand under the high waistband of the shorts and pulled them as far out as he could, increasing the tension when Daehyun rocked backwards to keep from falling onto him.

Then he hooked his thumbs into the material to give himself more leverage as he slowly eased them down. He hummed pleasantly to himself as he felt the waistband slide over the swell of Daehyun’s ass and carefully let the entire construction collapse into a dense black huddle, bunched at the tops of Daehyun’s thighs.

He pressed the backs of his hands against Daehyun’s legs, then, warm skin soft against the planes and angles of his knuckles. He slid them up, the backs of his fingers pressing into tense muscles, and hooked his first two fingers into the leg holes of the shorts right at the front of Daehyun’s hips. He looked up, a bright smile on his face, as he yanked the shorts all the way to the floor in one motion with a soft sound of effort. “See? Way easier than trying to wiggle them off yourself.”

This was hell. Daehyun had clearly choked on something in his sleep and died, and this was his punishment. For what, he wasn’t entirely certain. Maybe for not calling his mom often enough, or for “borrowing” the sexy magazines that Himchan kept hidden under his mattress. But whatever the sin he’d committed, he was absolutely certain that it did not merit this. His ass was uncomfortably cold, the band of his briefs wedged somewhat unpleasantly in the crease where it met his thighs after Jongup’s… Adventure with the shorts.

He realized, feeling somewhat vague, that the only thing that had kept them on at all was the hard arch of himself, providing resistance against the wide, brand-name emblazoned elastic. If it weren’t for that he’d be half-naked in front of Jongup right now. If he—

He was very nearly half-naked, in front of Jongup. Holy shit.

He swallowed thickly and reached back as casually as he could manage with hands made of wood and lead, and pulled his underwear up as he carefully stepped out of the shorts, kicking them towards the duffle. Then he tugged at the cropped hem of his sweater, vainly trying to cover up.

Because Jongup was still in front of him, almost close enough for Daehyun to feel the warmth of his body against the fronts of his legs, and there was suddenly nothing but a wrong move, a wrong _thought_ between him and utter humiliation. It was awful, and yet somehow really fucking hot, and none of this was okay.

After one last twist of his sweater he frowned and grumbled softly, reaching out to hook his hands under Jongup’s arms on the theory that once they were both standing up, maybe his dick would be a little less convinced that this was the best thing that had ever happened. “Thanks. I think I can get the rest of this off without any help. I’m not totally helpless, you know.”

Jongup let Daehyun guide him upwards, curling his fingers under to rub at the palms of his hands as he hiccuped out a soft laugh. “Okay, yeah. You’ve got way more experience with bras anyway. I don’t think I could get it off without, like. An instructional diagram. And maybe a Youtube video.”

He took a step away from Daehyun to give him space to pull on his sweats, then sat down on the bench. He looked up at his hyung, resting his elbows on his knees, and raised his eyebrows slightly. “Are you serious about me doing the Hyuna part? Because, like. If you really don’t want to do it, I’m pretty sure we could switch the chore without that much trouble.”

Daehyun gave Jongup a baffled look, his arms crossed and his hands twisted into the hem of his sweater, tugged up to just below the band of the bra in preparation for pulling it off. “Are we seriously talking about the choreography right now?”

The sweater came off in one swift, easy pull, and Daehyun shook his head in a somewhat ineffective attempt to settle his hair. He reached behind himself with one hand to thumb open the clasp of the bra, grinning a little to himself over Jongup’s professed inability to operate it. Once he had eased it off, slowly so as not to disorder the careful arrangement of the silicone padding, he carefully dropped it into the bag. Then he scooped up his black undershirt and tugged it over his head, pulling it down the lean lines of his torso with a happy sound.

But once he was properly clothed he realized that while he was much more _comfortable_ now than he had been, none of his real problems had been solved. He swallowed and carefully sat down next to Jongup on the bench, his knees apart for a much different reason than they had been the last time he’d been sitting here. As he opened his mouth to speak, his eyebrows quirked and his head turned left to watch Jongup’s face carefully, “Now”’s outro finished and the room suddenly fell silent. It startled him, disrupted his train of thought, and he rubbed his face with both hands as he made a frustrated sound.

Jongup watched all of this somewhat bemusedly, not entirely certain what he should do. He wanted to point out that of course they needed to talk about the chore, that was why they were here. But with Daehyun looking so upset, so unlike his usual composed, if sarcastic, self, he realized that trying to be dutiful was probably less important right now than making sure that his hyung was okay.

So he reached out with his right hand, smoothing the snarled tufts of Daehyun’s hair with his fingers, and asked, voice soft, “What should I do, hyung?”

The laugh that escaped from Daehyun’s throat was low and embarrassed as he turned his head into the reassuring press of Jongup’s hand. He let his own hands slide off his face reluctantly, blinking his eyes open to regard Jongup with a solemn expression only somewhat undercut by the flush on his cheeks.

He looked down, raking his lower lip with his teeth, then back up at Jongup’s face through his lashes as he said, voice just as soft in reply, “I dunno.”

As he let his hand slip down from Daehyun’s hair to rub Daehyun’s cheek with the backs of his curled fingers, thumb resting against the height of his cheekbone, Jongup realized somewhat distantly that the bungee jumping feeling had returned. He swallowed, his lips parting on the susurration of his breath. After a moment’s hesitation he let his fingers bump gently, one-two-three-four, over the sharp edge of Daehyun’s jaw so that he could rub the pad of his thumb against the plush swell of Daehyun’s lower lip.

Feeling as if his heart was in his throat, he pulled his eyes up to Daehyun’s, barely hearing his pant of effort. He licked his lips nervously as he leaned in, his fingers dragging against the soft of Daehyun’s cheek to brace fast against the structure of his face, cheekbone and jaw, holding them both steady. He paused briefly, putting his left hand on Daehyun’s thigh for balance, and whispered “Okay,” as he leaned in to press his lips to Daehyun’s, gentle and undemanding.

Daehyun’s breath pushed out of his nose all in a rush as his leg shifted, pressing up into the weight of Jongup’s hand. He opened and closed his hands once, hanging somewhat uselessly between his legs, then reached up to touch the side of Jongup’s face with his left hand. His fingertips traced the sharp slice of Jongup’s cheekbone up into his hairline, his hair distractingly soft.

When Jongup broke the kiss Daehyun took a shallow, shaky breath, which left his lips ever so slightly parted when Jongup pressed in again with a formless, eager sound. Not being in control of a kiss was new for Daehyun, and exquisitely frustrating. He pressed his palm against Jongup’s cheek with a low sound and reached across his body to fist his right hand into Jongup’s shirt, just over his floating ribs, to try and regain some sense of balance.

But then Jongup was pressing the ball of his thumb against the hinge of his jaw, precisely as Daehyun had done to him, and just as it had worked then, his jaw relaxed entirely of its own accord. He huffed another breath through his nose, tugging Jongup ever so slightly towards him. His head was spinning, goosebumps raising the fine hairs on his arms, but he was starting to feel as if he at least understood what was happening. Then the warm drag of Jongup’s tongue against his own left him completely floored.

Despite his own nerves, Jongup understood implicitly that the formless groan that ripped itself free of Daehyun’s throat was a good thing. He felt like he was trying to land a back tuck without spotting, the sensation of almost-falling making his back ache with tension even as excitement twisted in his gut. But he understood his body, recognized and accepted how good this felt, and did what seemed sensible.

He remembered how Daehyun had reacted the last time he’d pulled his hair, so he slid his right hand back—curling his fingers under so that the short, carefully manicured arcs of his nails scraped lightly over Daehyun’s cheek and ear—and grabbed into his hair just above the nape of his neck. The sudden tension in his wrist and forearm seemed to trigger a rush of something—adrenaline, maybe—that gave him the courage to run his tongue against the backs of Daehyun’s upper teeth before he retreated to steal a quick breath.

He pressed the palm of his left hand up Daehyun’s thigh to brace the blade of his hand against Daehyun’s right hip, thumb tucking naturally into the crease where hip met thigh met groin. He could feel the tension in Daehyun’s muscles beneath his hand and rubbed at them, feeling slightly giddy that he was having such an effect. After a moment’s hesitation he caught Daehyun’s lower lip in his teeth, tugging at it with a low sound of pleasure, before slowly letting it drag through their slightly crooked arc.

When it finally slipped free, jolting another groan from Daehyun’s throat, he hiccuped a little giggle and ducked his head, running the bridge of his nose against the underside of Daehyun’s jaw. He shifted his fingers in Daehyun’s hair, working them free, and slid his right hand along the back of Daehyun’s neck to palm firmly down the line of his spine as he murmured, lips brushing Daehyun’s Adam’s apple, “Hey, hyung. This is fun.”

Daehyun’s answering laugh was rocky, sounding over-loud in his own ears. He panted softly for a long moment, letting his head tip back to rest against the wall behind him while he tried to ignore the warmth of Jongup’s breath against his skin, the intermittent humid rush of it against the left side of his throat. He pressed his lips together as he swallowed, trying to find some sort of order to his thoughts.

After a moment’s hesitation he pressed his right hand flat against Jongup’s side, the thin cotton of his shirt an utterly ineffective concealment for the dips and curves of dense muscle that defined the line of his waist. He rubbed at them curiously, fingers slipping from Jongup’s ribs to just above the waistband of his sweats, and finally admitted, voice a raspy ghost of itself, “Yeah, it is.”

Jongup leaned into the press of Daehyun’s hand with a happy sound, shifting farther from the wall as he panted unabashed against Daehyun’s throat. This _was_ awesome. Super awesome. But the angles were sort of awkward, with him twisted around on the bench to get at Daehyun’s skin.

So he lifted his head to check that he wasn’t misremembering the dimensions of the bench, then slid his right hand around from the small of Daehyun’s back to rest against his left shoulder for balance. With a small sound of exertion he twisted himself around, bringing his left knee gracefully up and over the sprawl of Daehyun’s legs to tuck against the wall, the worn toe of his sneaker flexing against the underside of the bench for leverage.

His right leg was easier to arrange, and by the time he was satisfied that he wasn’t going to fall he realized that Daehyun was staring up at him with a dazed expression, lips slack and eyes wide. He grinned down at him, flush with a rush of excitement and pride in himself for having figured something out, and reached down with both hands to grab the front of Daehyun’s undershirt so he could haul him upwards, the muscles in his arms and core flexing against the drag of Daehyun’s shocked weight.

His breath hitched as the shift in their positions brought their bodies together, his hips juddering a little at the grind of his cock against the warm press of Daehyun’s stomach. It gave his voice a hint of something - urgency, maybe, or awe - as he licked the words “Much better,” into Daehyun’s mouth before deepening the contact into another open, searching kiss.

It only took a moment for Daehyun to realize that his feet were on the ground, even as shocked as he was by how quickly this had escalated. At which point he arched them, pressing the balls of his feet against the hard wood of the floor. He tensed his calves, flexed his thighs, and buried his hands in Jongup’s hair as he rolled his hips up against the weight of Jongup’s body with a blurry sound of pleasure.

This was entirely outside of Daehyun’s experience, but it felt _good_ , all of his worry and embarrassment quashed by the frisson of pleasure birthed by the rock of their hips and the slick slide of their mouths. He pressed his tongue into Jongup’s mouth, exploring at his leisure, rubbing tiny circles against Jongup’s scalp with his fingertips as he carded his fingers restlessly through Jongup’s hair.

He only broke the kiss when the near-liquid roll of Jongup’s hips brought their cocks into alignment. He let out a startled cry, sharp and rocky, and pulled Jongup’s head back to stare up at him, feeling shell-shocked and too-hot, too-cold all over. He caught his lower lip in his teeth, breath ripping through his nose, and rolled his own hips up in a mirrored motion as he watched Jongup’s face, unblinking.

Jongup pressed the tip of his tongue against his lower lip as he took a deep breath, realizing with a slight shock that it was swollen and kiss-slick. He let his left hand slide up to press against the wall next to Daehyun’s ear, bicep flexing to take more of his weight as he leaned forward slightly. It gave him more room to maneuver, which was all to the good, when moving felt this good and made Daehyun look like _that_. He couldn’t quite tell if the ache in his back was exertion or arousal, but he didn’t really care, either.

From the way that Daehyun was breathing, rapid and heavy enough to make his stomach move visibly under his shirt, he was doing _something_ right. So he kept it up, a brief, sun-bright smile flashing across his face as he palmed down Daehyun’s chest with his right hand.

Then, because even in this entirely new and strange circumstance Jongup knew what he liked, what felt good, he let his right hand drag over the edge of Daehyun’s sweats to palm up his own thigh, hooking his thumb under the band of his white singlet so that he could run his palm up his stomach with an open, gasping sound of pleasure.

Jongup barely registered the way that Daehyun’s eyes were widening as he let his own eyes slip closed, pressing his temple against his braced arm. He slid his hand up higher to press his thumb firmly against his right nipple, his hips hitching slightly in their steady roll as he caught his lower lip between his teeth.

Daehyun felt as if he’d been on some sort of evil, demented sexual rollercoaster for the last half hour or so. And it had definitely flipped into overdrive in the last fifteen minutes. He still wasn’t entirely certain if he was more turned on or freaked out, and yet somehow that was hot? If he’d had more opportunity to think about it he’d have tried to figure out more precisely how stomach-churning embarrassment and nerves could possibly be _sexy_ , but then Jongup was suddenly _there_.

It was like the entire world had narrowed down to Jongup. Jongup in IMAX ultra high definition, realer than real. It was like all he could feel was Jongup’s body against his and the way that he was moving, all sure and confident and fucking ridiculously good. Like all he could see was the warm gold of Jongup’s skin against the crisp white cotton as he _pulled_ up his shirt and rubbed the pad of his thumb over his nipple and all he could hear was the little noise he made when he did it and—

Daehyun had to grab Jongup’s hips to keep from throwing him off as he came, so hard that his eyes stung and his fingertips tingled. He was distantly aware of the noise that he’d made, voice cracking high and startlingly loud. As soon as his cock stopped twitching he melted back against the bench and the wall behind it, panting hard. He dragged his hands off Jongup’s hips to cover his face with a mortified little whimper. “Oh, fuck.”

It was the sensation of suddenly falling backwards, his hand sliding from the wall to Daehyun’s shoulder with the force of it, that shocked Jongup’s eyes open, but for a long moment, all he could do was stare. The way that Daehyun looked was utterly indescribable, and the _sounds_ he made were just. Wow. It made his dick twitch in his boxer briefs, made his muscles ache with the need to touch, to move, to do something, but all he could do was watch.

He almost felt the moment when Daehyun’s body was spent, sighed at the way he collapsed loosely back against the wall. He very carefully sat back on Daehyun’s thighs, still breathing heavily, and reached up to smooth his shaking fingertips over Daehyun’s hair, noting distantly that it was warm and slightly damp with sweat. “Are you okay?”

“Mmh.” Daehyun took a deep breath and then another, trying to halt the tripping pant of his breath through his lips. Finally he splayed his fingers apart so that he could peer up at Jongup through them, and very nearly hid his face again at what he saw. Jongup looked like— He looked like a god, skin glowing with perspiration and face flushed, across his nose and cheeks and bleeding down to gild his chest. His shirt was still twisted over his ribs, which let him see the individual muscles of his stomach moving with his rapid, shallow breaths, and Daehyun could have lived his entire life without the knowledge of what Jongup looked like when he was having sex and died happy.

But now he knew, and that knowledge made his chest ache even as the rest of him went all hazy and soft-edged. He finally rubbed his fingers against his eyes and let his hands fall, resting somewhat awkwardly against the bunch of muscle just above Jongup’s knees, the definition visible with his sweats pulled taught. It was hard to meet Jongup’s gaze, full of want and urgency, but he forced himself to. He pulled at his lower lip with his teeth for a moment before finally admitting, his voice husky and rough—sated. “Yeah. Uh— What about you?”

Jongup’s choked noise was somewhere between frustration and disbelief as he shifted his hip and gestured with the hand not still pressed against Daehyun’s shoulder. The wet spot over the head of his cock was dark against the pale grey of his sweats, not so loose as to conceal the painfully hard arch of him in any meaningful way. He took a deep breath through his nose and looked at the ceiling, then down at Daehyun again as he asked, unaware of just how pleading the expression on his face was, “Could you— Are we— What. Um.”

The needy whine of Jongup’s voice and the pathetic tilt of his eyebrows were like a bucket of cold water down Daehyun’s back, and suddenly he wasn’t feeling nearly as sleepy or blissed out. He started to sit up, then had to somewhat clumsily help Jongup stand up so that his awkward wiggling wouldn’t knock him off the bench entirely. He could just imagine what Jongup wanted, and the thought of actually— Of trying to— It made the nervous twist in his stomach reappear, without any of the counterbalance of arousal that had helped make everything seem so reasonable just a few minutes earlier.

He stood up too, wobbling a little bit when his legs weren’t nearly as steady as he was used to them being, and caught his balance against Jongup’s elbow. He looked at Jongup for a long moment, their eyes level thanks to the soles of Jongup’s sneakers. His own confusion was transparent on his face as he said softly, unaware of just how much his embarrassment colored his husky mumble, “I guess, I guess I could try—”

“No, no. It’s okay, hyung. I’ll just— I’ll be right back, okay?” Jongup didn’t think that what he was feeling was hurt, not exactly. It was just that Daehyun looked— He looked so _good_ , sleepy-eyed and flushed and, and Jongup felt like his entire body was full of lightning, zapping along his nerves. He wanted to find that feeling, he wanted to touch Daehyun and to kiss him and— And he didn’t quite know what to make of the slightly stricken look on Daehyun’s face.

He started to turn, then stopped, rocking back on his heels for a moment before he spun, trying to move faster than the fear that he might be doing somthing wrong. He pressed a fleeting little kiss to the corner of Daehyun’s mouth and repeated, “I’ll be right back.”

Daehyun watched Jongup as he paced for the door, slightly awkward, but— He moved like a big cat, all muscular grace and barely restrained action. For a moment he almost followed when the door to the practice room clicked closed, but then he realized that he didn’t know what he would do if he caught him, and he collapsed back onto the bench with a hopeless little wail, covering his face with his hands again. “I am the worst. Jung Daehyun: Worst Hyung Ever.”

Jongup was desperately glad that it only took a few steps down the hall to reach the bathroom. Also that it was after midnight and no one was here, or ever likely to see this particular section of CCTV footage. Not that, to the best of his knowledge, anyone ever looked at _any_ of the CCTV footage unless something actually bad happened. Also that he was thinking of everything he possibly could that _wasn’t_ how fucking bad he wanted to be getting off. Right this second.

Fuck everything. He pushed the bathroom door closed, the weight of his body fighting the pneumatic hinge, and flipped the lock with his right hand, not even bothering to turn on the light. His head hit the metal door with a hollow thunk as he hooked his thumb into the band of his underwear and hauled them down his thighs, carrying his sweats with them. He let his feet brace, maybe half again shoulder width apart and knees locked (it wasn’t like this was going to take long enough for him to worry about them getting sore) and brought his left hand up to catch as much spit as he could manage, dry-mouthed as he was, between his thumb and forefinger.

He gritted his teeth as he fisted his right hand over his cock, huffing a jagged breath into the markedly colder air. Pressing the tip of his tongue against the sharp edges of his teeth in a vain attempt to focus on something that wasn’t the heat pounding between his hips, drawing his balls tight, he carefully dragged his spit-laden fingers over the head of his cock, already slick with pre-come. He brought his hand back up to suck them clean, then bit down on the web of skin between them to stifle the sharp, wanting noise he made as he snapped his hips forward into the almost-too-tight grip of his fist.

The throbbing, bright-edged ache of his blunt teeth digging into his flesh gave him a focus, a distraction from the last evanescent cobwebs of the worry that had been distracting him from his goal. His body moved easy, hips doing most of the work as he all but fucked the circle of his hand, little shiver-shocks of pleasure dragging down his spine every time the sensitive head of his cock brushed the carefully maintained but still somewhat rough skin of his palm without the protection of his foreskin, jerking little, breathy gasps from his lips.

His rhythm broke almost before he could find it, and just as he could feel himself teetering on the edge he dragged his left hand down to twist his nipple as hard as he could manage through the thin cotton of his shirt. Just like always it made him cough out a startled groan, formless and sharp, and come. He rocked up onto the balls of his feet as he grimaced, palming at the head of his dick as he rolled his entire body with the intensity of it.

When he could think again he reached out—careful to use his left hand, even when it meant reaching cross-body—and slapped at the light switch until the lights flickered on. Then he did a quick reconnaissance on just how much cleaning up he had to do. Thankfully he’d managed to keep most of it to himself. He just needed to grab some tissues for his junk and one spot that had ended up on the… Door of the bathroom stall? Huh.

He reached out again with his left hand to grab the tissues, bringing his right hand up to drag the flat of his tongue over the palm of his hand. That took care of most of it, and he cleaned up as much of the rest as he could with short, cat-like licks of his tongue as he hummed to himself.

Once his hand was acceptably clean he started making sure that he could put his shorts back on without complicating his already somewhat precarious laundry situation, tugging them out by the waistband to get a better idea of how much of a mess he’d made. It wasn’t that Junhong was bad at doing the laundry, per se. It was just that there were six of them, and with as busy as their schedule was, sometimes it took a while for him to catch up.

And these were his last clean pair of underwear. Or rather, they had been his last clean pair of underwear an hour ago. Now they were… Not. “Fuck.”

Jongup shucked his underwear and sweats down his legs, carefully navigating his sneakers through them, and sat his sweats down next to the sink as he lifted his baby blue boxer briefs up to get a better view of them in the slight flicker of the fluorescent light. They were definitely not clean, but he figured if he went at them with some wet tissues they’d at least see him through until tomorrow after schedules when Junhong had promised that he would get a few loads of laundry done.

So he finished cleaning himself and the stall door. Seriously, how had he done that. Sometimes he was baffled by the things his body managed to do. He shoved the tissues into the trash, hoping that no one would actually bother looking, then figuring that no one would really care anyway. Finally he grabbed a few more and wet them in the sink, carefully dabbing at the fine knit of his underwear before deciding that they were as clean as they were likely to get.

He pulled them back on. They felt sort of cold against his hip, where the worst of the mess had been, but he figured it wasn’t anything he couldn’t ignore. Then he repeated the process with his sweats and put them on backwards, rolling the band an extra turn to hide the discoloration and tugging his shirt down over his hips before he looked at himself in the mirror.

He looked tired, a little sweaty and slightly more flushed than usual, but other than how full his mouth was, he didn’t think that anyone would be unduly suspicious. Hopefully that would go away by the time they went home.

He turned to open the door and belatedly realized that he should probably wash his hands. Once the water was on he decided to splash some water on his face in an attempt to make his flush go away. Which required more paper towels to keep the water from soaking into his shirt. All told it took him almost ten minutes to return to the practice room, and he both looked and felt far more composed when he pushed the door open and stuck his head in, eyes scanning for Daehyun as he realized with a jolt of unfamiliar nervousness that this might be sort of awkward.

Daehyun had also tried to clean up, though he still looked significantly more disheveled than Jongup. His hair was going in about eight different directions at once and he’d pulled his hoodie on over his shirt, which made him look, as always, slightly too small, delicate and fine-boned against the sheer volume of black material.

He’d also had the misfortune of being the person close enough to their cellphones to get double-teamed by Himchan’s rapidfire onslaught of texts and then calls reminding them that it was lights out, and where, precisely, were they? Which was why his sneakers were back on his feet, and his heavy winter coat sitting on his knees as he waited for Jongup to return.

The sheer impossibility of _not_ thinking about what Jongup had been doing during the long minutes after he’d wedged his underwear into the bottom of a wastebasket on the other side of the floor of practice rooms had painted his cheeks a dull, embarrassed red. He found it impossible to meet Jongup’s eyes as he stood up at the click of the door, puffy coat crinkling as he twisted it in his hands. “Himchan called. We’ve got to head back home for bed. So we’ll have to work on the choreography tomorrow after schedules, I guess.”

Jongup bit back a curse when he realized just how late it must be if Himchan was calling to pester them about it. He half-jogged over to the bench and started putting on his own hoodie and coat, which Daehyun had laid out carefully next to the zipped duffle.

“Fuck. Okay. I’ll try to get as much of Hyunseung’s chore as I can between schedules tomorrow, and you can talk to the stylist noonas about your outfit, yeah? I don’t really think Korea is ready to see that much of your legs.” Daehyun realized dimly that he was babbling.

Jongup couldn’t help but laugh at that as he zipped up his coat. It was unpleasantly warm in the building, but definitely necessary for dealing with the sub-zero chill of outside. Daehyun followed suit and slung the bag over his shoulder, reaching out to tangle the fingers of his left hand with Jongup’s right as they walked for the door.

Jongup grinned up at Daehyun, swinging their joined hands jauntily. “But let’s get home, first. It won’t matter if the noonas find me the perfect outfit tomorrow if Himchan murders us tonight for keeping him from his beauty sleep.” He was unable to keep the soft slur of tiredness—compounded by the warm blur suffusing his limbs—out of his voice, but he didn’t give a fuck.

**Author's Note:**

> That Now pun is awful and I am sorry. (That is the only thing I am sorry about though.)
> 
> *rides cackling into the sunset*


End file.
